


Memoria Misera Memories

by Ilphros



Series: Journals of a Lominsan Scholar [3]
Category: Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers, Tags Are Hard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-02
Updated: 2020-06-02
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:28:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24503881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ilphros/pseuds/Ilphros
Summary: Just a little bit about Memoria Misera. Ended up being more about the memory crystals than anything else... which is not what I intended. Oops!Spoilers for Patch 5.25, but not *that* many.
Series: Journals of a Lominsan Scholar [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1770475
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2





	Memoria Misera Memories

The Journal of Khuja’to Relanah, Scholar of Limsa

Cid’s memory was… unpleasant. Interesting, and I’m glad I was able to help him with it. But I can definitely see a certain Allagan design philosophy in these memory crystals – powerful, with few checks or warnings against harm.

Thankfully, Cid doesn’t read my papers without permission (good evening Alisaie, you’ve picked up bad habits,) and so I don’t have to worry too much about how poorly-phrased that last paragraph was.

Some of it certainly belongs to him alone, and I won’t even be asking whether Varis actually fights like the memory-vision we saw of him or not. I am glad, though, that… beating that vision seems to have genuinely been helpful to Cid. I do not think those memory crystals can alter memories in the way I had first assumed, or at least, they can’t without modifications.

Walking through that twisted city, something stuck with me… To ‘move forwards’, Cid had to remember, and when we faced the most emotionally important thing, to him, of that entire memory, it had the most layers of change and replacement to be peeled away. But we weren’t _able_ to alter a memory that was already factual – we could not change the result of the fighting between Imperial ~~soldiers~~ conscripts and Bozjan fighters.

Fighting Varis was… satisfying. Deeply satisfying, and I am glad that I made sure to bring Fray along for the procedure. We turned out not to need that self’s more psychological assistance, but it felt wonderful to punch even an image of that sanctimonius, hypocritical dictator in the face with everyone at my side (sort of.)

I think I’ve been meandering, perhaps because Cid’s secrets should stay his own. He has recovered well – I think facing the truth with a friend there who could see what he saw and still help him through it was… good for him. I suppose if I’m to avoid one topic, I might as well discuss another.

The structure of memory those crystals access is _strange_. Details that were adjacent to events with emotional meaning to Cid, but which had no emotional meaning themselves, were crystal-clear – events and places which were directly meaningful were… I think twisted in a way based on what Cid ‘wished’ was different, but saw as ‘plausible’? We saw an awful memory, and so the false versions were almost equally awful, but not in the particular way that hurt Cid most. The version of memory that the crystal called up did not correspond to a wish that the events not have happened at all, or have happened implausibly differently – and the less plausible the replacement, the less tenacious the replacement. Solus being there would have been slightly reasonable, but was still so implausible that simply Cid’s denial banished him; Varis being there… fit the timeline, and fit some of what we’ve learned of Varis since, and Varis was rather more powerful. Or, the vision of Varis, not the real Varis, of course.

Perhaps related is that when Cid reached out for support, Ryne appeared, but Biggs and Wedge did not. To my knowledge, Cid has never heard about Ryne from anyone who has met her directly! I think… we (myself and Mikoto) had rather more influence over the exact form those memories took than was immediately apparent. Cid accepted my advice to reach out to trusted friends – and got, largely, _my version_ of his most trusted friends in the Scions. Or maybe he’s not as close to Biggs and Wedge as I thought?... I doubt that; rather more likely that the memory-crystal, the Echo, or simply ‘being present in his memories’ was meaningful, especially since he has never actually _met_ Ryne.

I wonder about ‘memory residue’ and ‘soul crystals’. The experience is different, but not wholly different – perhaps soul crystals carry enough memory for ‘implicit memories’ of training to carry over. It would explain some of the things that I have seen manifest from a soul crystal. What about an Imperial Auracite, then? Despite all of those who had never seen a Primal thinking that the result of the Auracite could be like a Soul Crystal gone terribly powerful and terribly wrong, I don’t think it was even as distant from a Primal as the False Seraph Ultima’s Auracites – her creations did not carry illusory worlds with them, save for herself (and she is a Primal, so that fits the theory as well.) Meanwhile the figure of Nael van Darmus made from the Ruby Weapon’s pilot ‘crashed Dalamud into Carteneau’ _three times_. We weren’t even at Carteneau!

I’ve completely gone off every topic I intended and now I’m ~~upset~~ annoyed, so I think I’m going to go bother G’raha instead.


End file.
